The Disney-Fox Merger Is Official

It was touch and go there for a while, and Comcast nearly swooped in and canceled the whole deal. But in the end, it happened: The merger of Disney and 21st Century Fox is going forward. Per Variety, shareholders of both companies voted to approve the deal, which will cost Disney in the neighborhood of $71 billion.

Shareholders gathered Friday morning at the New York Hilton for separate meetings to vote on the historic transaction that the companies first set back in December. Both meetings were brief, lasting less than 15 minutes. Gerson Zweifach, general counsel of 21st Century Fox, told Fox shareholders the merger is expected to be completed in the first half of 2019. He hailed the deal as ‘a transformative transaction that will enable us to unlock significant value for our stockholders.’

And so now you are free to seriously resume all that speculation you started months ago when news of this first hit the wires. Will the Fox studio continue to exist or will it all be combined into one giant Disney omnicorp umbrella? Will Disney reboot or continue Fox franchises like Alien, Die Hard, and Predator? And how do the Fox-controlled Marvel characters like the X-Men and Fantastic Four, get brought under the Marvel Cinematic Universe banner? It’s going to be be a very interesting 2019 and 2020 as these answers begin to get sorted out.

The Justice Department has already okay this deal, provided that Disney sells off Fox’s regional sports networks. So at this point it is basically a matter of time. It’s not if, but how and when.